The Great Pharaoh is anything but great. A simple match 3 game from a simpler time, maybe early 2000s, late 1990s. The back story in why we are playing this game is a little disturbing. They tell us of how different kings would build their great cities in Kemet, and what resources they would use to fund the building. In this tale, we are funding the royal coffers by, hoo boy… pretty much tomb raiding for gold.

Knowing a little about Kemetic faiths and practices of the time, it was surprising that this game got through to be downloaded. It is simple enough to play, match 3 stones up until you get enough gold to finish the level, and try to take out the mummies that will steal the gold along the way, but can you blame these mummies for wanting their money back? Kemetics believed that they could take their earthly treasures with them so they would follow with their ka into the next life, and sure, there were tomb raiders back even then. These thieves usually ended up dying rather painfully, but for a king to send a team of raiders in to scavenge gold from former nobles would have put a serious black mark on his reign, no matter how good his intentions were. Read more...(291 words, 32 images, estimated 1:10 mins reading time)

Many of us watched those stop-action animation holiday specials on TV back in the 1970s, and we just did not think it could get any better. We looked forward to seeing the Rankin/Bass specials, but none of them could ever have prepared us for a much darker and creepier version that would come out two decades later. Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas, just floored me the first time I saw it. This was just as computer graphic animation was just getting started, and I had not been able to see the first Toy Story movie before I had seen this. Even now, though the animations seem a little stiff compared to what we see in the latest releases, this movie never seems to stop being enjoyable. Read more...(762 words, 96 images, estimated 3:03 mins reading time)